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How to Go From Disruptor to Industry Leader: 5 Ways Disney and the UFC Think Alike

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Entrepreneurship the Disney Way | How to Go From Disruptor to Industry Leader: 5 Ways Disney and the UFC Think AlikeDisney and the Ultimate Fighting Championship are not as big a mismatch as you might think. In fact, the two organizations share five compelling strategies that connect them by more than a business deal. But when Disney’s 80% ownership of ESPN led to a groundbreaking deal for the broadcasting rights of UFC last May, it was a milestone for UFC. Just how UFC became a viable media property for Disney holds lessons for any company seeking legitimacy and business success in today’s market.

When UFC arrived on the scene back in 1993, it was an upstart — a gritty disruptor in the world of sports. Its fights, while intriguing, were more side-show than serious competition. Seen only on pay-per-view and videocassette, UFC struggled in its early days to find venues willing to put on their show. But in one of the most transformative business acts in business history, owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and CEO Dana White formulated an approach to gain legitimacy in the greater sports world. Their strategy shares five key similarities with Disney:

1. Know what your assets are.

Both Disney and the UFC know what their most valuable assets are, and they make a great effort to protect them. For Disney, those assets are great stories and characters. The Walt Disney Company has a treasure trove of intellectual property that it protects and promotes with exacting attention. For the UFC, it’s all about putting the best athletes in the world into interesting and exciting matches that create anticipation months before a fight. In a sense, the UFC is also in the story and character business, but marketed to a different demographic than Disney.

2. Work to gain legitimacy.

Disney and UFC understand the chief concerns of their primary stakeholders, and work to manage the key drivers of legitimacy in their industry. Disney must consider social trends, industry standards, fan expectations, and government relations. The UFC is no different: It gained social legitimacy by shifting from an “anything goes” format to instituting a standard set of rules, oversight by state sports commissions, and protocols for fighters’ health and protection. Many observers now consider the UFC to be one of the best-managed and regulated leagues in sports.

3. Offer quality entertainment.

Disney and the UFC are both in the entertainment business, and committed to providing quality shows. Disney is famous for its attention to detail in all of its products. For the UFC, quality is measured in the capabilities of their athletes and the excitement of their fights. Just as Disney has a range of movies in the drama, comic book, and animation genres, the UFC has a whole range of weight classes that are deep with potential championship contenders. As a result, the UFC builds a lot of drama into their fight productions, including stories leading up to the events and tension-building campaigns. UFC fans await upcoming matches fought by their favorites with tremendous anticipation. The organization also has a constellation of its own stars, such as Gregor Gillespie, a scrappy grappler currently ranked tenth in the lightweight division.

4. Master market symmetry.

UFC’s and Disney’s products are quite different, but they take a similar approach to selling. Both are experts at market synergy and cross-promote to their markets better than just about anyone. Disney and UFC fans watch the shows, read the fan magazines, and buy related merchandise because of their attachment to the stories that each company promotes. Both companies are cash machines with multiple revenue streams coming from their core customers.

5. Protect the brand.

Both companies protect their brands at all cost. Disney is very careful about who represents the company. Any celebrities in their productions are expected to be in line with the company’s values. The UFC has the same expectation of its athletes, albeit with different codes of conduct. One excellent example of this was when the UFC suspended light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. Jones was arguably the greatest fighter in UFC history and a top draw for pay-per-view. But he failed a drug test, costing him as well as the UFC millions of dollars during a 15-month suspension. Jones is back and a top draw again, but he paid a big price by not adhering to the UFC’s drug policy.

Disney clearly believes the UFC is far more than an upstart now, and it’s betting big that UFC will be a highly lucrative addition to the Disney entertainment umbrella. Credit is due to Disney for seeing the value in the UFC, and due to the leadership of the UFC — who took all the right steps in successfully maneuvering and conquering regulatory and societal challenges. These two success stories hold invaluable lessons for other disruptors facing their own challenges for legitimacy in today’s complex society.


About the Author

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Industry Disruptor |How to Go From Disruptor to Industry Leader: 5 Ways Disney and the UFC Think AlikeMichael G. Goldsby is the Chief Entrepreneurship Officer and Stoops Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Ball State University, USA. His new book, with Rob Mathews, is Entrepreneurship the Disney Way. Learn more at www.ELProfile.com.

How Can A Business Owner Remain As Informed As Possible?

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | How Can A Business Owner Remain As Informed As Possible?Every business owner needs to remain informed in several fields should they hunt success. This is of course one of the most grounding and obvious principles to be accepted before you begin. But it is also quite essential to consider how, and why being informed matters, and how to ensure that even in the midst of success, you are able to keep your eye on the ball. Markets shift quickly, and customer perception will also. It’s very possible for a firm that broke revenue records last year becomes shunned a few months into the next. It’s incredibly possible for even massive, staple companies such as Apple to read the market and their audience incorrectly, or push the envelope just a little further towards predatory pricing than their customer base might accept.

This means as a small business owner, where each point of revenue is much more significant, you need to understand how to curate your output and try your best to regain your strong footing in the market. Staying informed is the way to get there.

But how does this look in a functional sense? Let us consider:

Remaining Up-To-Date

There are many forces that shape the landscape of a firm over time. Automation, technological shifts, cultural trends, the political sphere, these are but a few categories that can inform or discourage a purchase or subscription from the employees you care about. Remaining up-to-date means more than you might consider. It’s essential to keep up with the news of your industry. Subscribing to journal digests, and collating your own list of RSS news feed inputs can help you keep on top of the big stories as they happen. Following the movers and shakers of your industry on Twitter can also help you see where the next hot-button effort is, and that’s truly important to potentially subvert that and become a trendsetter yourself. Without knowing where everyone else is, it can be hard to define yourself and bring something new to the table.

Metrics

Every business owner knows that looking at their performance and reflecting on what’s going both right and wrong is essential if they hope to make any progress for the future. This can help you assess if you’re going along the right lines, or if you need a vital shift in your efforts. But if you simply know how to view those metrics and do not wish to streamline them or try to implement those solutions, you’ll be informed without practicality. This is where Softengine comes into play, as a means to help you collate your SAP business offerings, to help automate your essential processes, track them in real time, and to do so within several different departments. The more information you have to play with, the more metrics you can record and the more you can shift their intent, the better your business is at the end of the day.

Listen To The Staff

Your ground-floor staff are often those who interface with customers each day, who experience your policies and decision in real-time. Listen to them. This is essential to ensure that you gain valuable insight you couldn’t anywhere else. Keeping this open-door policy and encouraging those reports can help you tap into information other business owners might not be.

With these tips, you’re certain to remain as informed as possible.

Why Everyone Needs to Know a Banking Expert Witness

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Banking Expert | Why Everyone Needs to Know a Banking Expert WitnessThink about some of the most heated arguments of your professional and personal life. Odds are, a good percentage of those disagreements were about money. Money is a driving force in most people’s lives: getting it, keeping it, and spending it. Some people even claim that money is the root of all evil. Unfortunately, many criminal or ethically questionable actions are taken in the name of money every single day, and in today’s increasingly litigious world this often leads to a trip to court.

Financial knowledge in the courtroom is not just for large cases involving corporations or millions of dollars. A simple breakdown in communication or disagreement could lead to a lawsuit at any time, with anyone. The neighborhood kid who mows your law could even take you to court if your actions are interpreted as malicious, such as refusing to pay him for a poor job. While that example is extreme, it does show that litigation is lurking everywhere, and a responsible person should be prepared for the worst. Having a network that includes a banking expert, or knowing of a reputable one, could be important on short notice.

The complexities of banking and finance involve a lot of moving parts as well as regulations and systems that are constantly in flux. Only someone with extensive professional knowledge is qualified to appear before a courtroom as an expert witness. Bolstering your legal team with a banking expert is crucial to help insulate your assets from greedy unwarranted claims and even deserved ones. Minimizing your exposure to losing a lawsuit of any kind involves relationships with more than just an attorney.

Finding an expert witness can be as easy as a Google search. However, checking for a long history of fulfilling this role as well as pertinent professional experience is important. Searching for the best expert can help anyone get closer to legal victory.

Ideas For Keeping Your Small Business Protected Online

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Cybersecurity | Risk Management | Ideas For Keeping Your Small Business Protected Online These days you’re likely doing a lot of business and performing your tasks online. While the Internet can be an extremely beneficial way to run your company, it also comes with its downsides.

One cause for concern is being vulnerable to hackers and those who wish to sabotage your files and business. The following ideas are going to help you learn and understand what you can be doing better at your workplace to protect your small business online. This is one subject matter you want to take seriously and attend to if you wish to keep your company free from any unfortunate situations that will be difficult to clean up later on.

Educate Yourself and Be Current

One idea for keeping your small business protected online is to educate yourself on the topic. Be current about knowing what anti-virus programs to use, what backups to perform and when and getting to know your computers better so you can make sure they’re consistently running smoothly. The more you know about IT maintenance, the less of a chance there will be that your business will fall victim to hackers and wrongdoers. You put yourself at risk for negative consequences when you choose not to learn more about online security and what you can be doing better to improve it at your workplace.

Hire Help

Another great idea is to hire help and pay for the professionals to assist you on the matter such as using a Managed IT service. The reality is there’s a lot of information in this area you’re not going to know and will need assistance with if you want to make sure your business is protected online. You likely have other pressing matters and initiatives to attend to and can’t always be in the know about what’s new in the IT world. Invest in using a third party to help you make sure you’re doing all you can to keep yourselves safe on the Internet.

Use Strong Passwords

Never underestimate the advantages of using strong passwords to protect your computers and files. Keep your small business protected online by committing to using passwords that would make it difficult for someone else to hack into your information. Create ones that are challenging and complex, but also update your current passwords often so that it makes it harder for someone else to guess it or compromise your data.

Provide Best Practices to Your Employees

It’s not only your job to make sure your business is protected online, but also that of your employees. However, they may not be aware of how important this matter is or how to go about doing so unless you inform them. Provide best practices your employees can use to make sure their laptops and files are secure. For example, educate them about not clicking suspicious looking links, following through and complying with computer updates and who to ask or turn to should they have online security questions.

How to Start a Team Building Events Company

StrategyDriven Business Startup Article | How to Start a Team Building Events CompanyWhile most business owners are aware of the fact that their employees play a huge part in the company’s overall success, it has really only been in the past decade or so that business owners have come to appreciate that to its fullest. Not only do you need a staff of properly trained, experienced, and knowledgeable employees, but they also need to work well as a team. If there is a lack of communication or conflict between staff and departments, the entire company suffers, as does the bottom line.

This is where team building activities and events have really taken center stage, as they are the perfect way to bring everyone together and start to open up lines of communication and build trust with one another. This has also sparked the creation of team building events companies, who are the ones that put these events together and host them.

If you’ve been watching this trend and feel like now is the time to get in the ring and open your own team building events company, then here are some tips that can help you get started.

Create a Business Plan

Just like with any business the best place to start is with a plan. Within this plan, you want to outline the basic concept of your company, outline the business’s goals, describe what actions and plans you will take in order to reach your goals, who your target market is, what services and products you will offer, the financials, and how many employees you’ll need.

Invest in Engaging Games, Activities, and Rides

In order to be successful with your team building events company, you’re going to need to stand out from the competition, as this is an industry that is growing fast. One of the best ways to stand out is to offer your clients the best of the best when it comes to engaging games, activities, and rides. Clients need to be able to take a look at your offerings and feel as though you’ll knock it out of the park where employee engagement is concerned.

Take a look at the options available through Galaxy Multi Rides via https://galaxymultirides.com/ as great examples. You can invest in any one of these games and rides and know that displaying them on your company website will draw attention.

Ensure You Have a Digital Presence

This leads us to the next tip which is to ensure you have a robust and engaging digital presence right from the start. This means a professional looking website that operates smoothly and a presence on all the top social networks. Digital platforms will provide you with a way to interact and engage with the public, fill them in on new and exciting offerings and promotions, share useful information, and start to build name recognition.

Remember Any Business Takes Time to Grow

Even with following each of these tips, it’s important to remind yourself that your team building events company will take time to build and grow. This is natural and just part of being an entrepreneur.